As part of our skilling-up phase, back in the days before we moved to Milkwood, both Nick and i spent time at various Permaculture farms and properties all over the joint. We learnt to milk beautiful, melting-eyed jersey cows, hack away at spiny amaranth with machetes, shift un-cooperative cell-grazed sheep, make good compost and propagate seedlings.

We emptied compost toilets, learnt to slaughter animals mindfully + respectfully, figured out how to make fresh bamboo shoots edible and coaxed elderly solar systems back to life with creative wiring. It was sort of like a really long-winded, purposeful camping trip, and we learnt a great deal and became enthusiastic about many things that we just didn’t ‘get’ previously. Sometimes you’ve just got to do it to get it – reading and talking about it aint the same.

Since we’ve been here at Milkwood we’ve had the opportunity to offer our own version of that experience to various interns and WOOFers. And consequently, over the last year we’ve made some great friends, shared skills and had many belly-laughs with people we would never have otherwise met. So we’ve decided to do it again this year and open up Milkwood Farm to a small stream of interns who will live and work with us from this coming spring until the farm closes for the year at the end of April 2011.

This coming season will see Milkwood Farm host many amazing Permaculture courses, in addition to the NSW leg of the 2010 Regenerative Agriculture Workshop Series, a rather groundbreaking initiative that will see some world-leading teachers of regenerative agriculture come to Australia to teach for the first time. We’ll also be finishing off and moving into our tinyhouse and progressing to the next phase of Milkwood Farm development, with new animal systems, food forests, forage systems, orchard establishment and maybe even a maincrop. Quite a bit to do. And you know what they say about many hands…

So if you’re interested in taking a two-month chunk out of your busy life and getting hands-on with us this coming season, applications for our rolling internship program for Spring 2010 – Autumn 2011 are now open.

Tom hacks a hole for some pioneer plantings at the rocky end of our main swale – plantings that are now over a meter tall, thanks to the swale, cover cropping and careful species selection.